Unfortunate
by Ceris Malfoy
Summary: G1. One never knows just how far a mech is willing to go. Warnings: Character death. Lots of it.
1. Descent

**Title: **Unfortunate

**Part 1:** Descent

**Summary:** One never knows just how far a mech is willing to go.

**Characters: **Starscream, Decepticons, Autobots

**Warnings: **bad mojo, character death

**Continuity:** G1

**AN: **This is not going to be a happy story. (Though, to be honest, are any of my stories?) This story was born from two things.

The first is Bad vs. Evil's song "Above the Law". It's a really good song, especially the hook/chorus. I started to write a story about an AU! Pre-War Starscream, one who never attended an Academy, one who never met Skyfire, one who never rose above the type-cast of war-build, and how that Starscream eventually managed to attract the attention of Megatron and claw his way up the ranks of the Decepticon Armada. It was going to be epic, but... well. I still might write that, but now right now.

The second thing that really influenced this story is the above quote. Bibliotecaria.D is one of my favorite TF writers on FF. She/He (profile doesn't say) writes these incredible stories that fit so seemlessly into canon that I'm constantly in awe. In the story Jezebel, She/He writes the line below this AN, and it struck me as just how impressive that really was. It made me think about Starscream, and what he does/is capable of that the G1 universe, and the fans themselves, make light of. I had to rewatch the series again, but this time I paid very, very close attention to Starscream, and by extent Megatron, because those two are practically canonnically paired. XD It's funny, but it's almost like the people who animated the G1 series couldn't deal with a real villain. Any time Starscream does something that is rather remarkable, someone/something comes up with a way to not only stop him, but humiliate him by extension. Same thing for Megatron.

So, yeah. Got to thinking. And then I decided that no matter how awesome Starscream could have been, there was obviously some sort of game he was playing with his "Lord," some greater design he was working towards, some line of reasoning that he very carefully toed. This story is the story of what happens when that 'line' is erased, and Starscream has nothing to keep him tethered.

Hint: A lot of mechs die.

* * *

"_With no more malicious feeling than normal, he'd nearly destroyed a planet and them with it. He'd had nothing but a crippled human and his own hands. Now he had motivation."_

-Bibliotecaria.D, Jezebel

* * *

He wakes, thoughts clouded and body aching, from a deep void that experience has taught him was stasis-lock. Warnings are blaring across his vision, but he is confused and in pain and in no mood to deal with his throbbing processor so he lets them. His vocalizer hurts, but his wings hurt more and he feels…

…_different_. Wrong. There is something wrong, something missing. He keeps his optics shuttered, but does a quick systems check – damaged, severely so, but all there. But…something is _missing_. It nags at him, a tugging in his already scrambled thoughts and his spark. And there is a noise – high-pitched with an almost desperate edge to the tone – so much noise.

It's screaming, he notes somewhat belatedly. Someone is screaming. It takes him several long clicks to notice that he is the one screaming. But why? Why would he scream like that? Sure he was in pain, but he had experienced worse before, hadn't he? Why?

And why did his spark ache so? It felt wrong, like it had been shredded and pieces were missing, like the day he had lost Skyfire times three.

"PUT HIM BACK UNDER!"

The yell startles him, but in a distant sort of way. The voice is familiar, comforting in a way, frightening in yet another, but familiar. Distantly he notes that he is still screaming – that is him, right? – and that there are now hands pressed against his frame, which he is also surprised to note, has been moving, straining against whatever-it-is that binds him to whatever he is on. Probably a berth.

There is pain, and his thoughts are growing fuzzier, more indistinct.

And then there is nothing.

* * *

It isn't real; it cannot be real.

He shakes his helm, shutters his optics, and presses his hands against his audials, unable to comprehend or accept what he is being told. It is alright if the constructicons grow more concerned at his actions because they are _filthy liars_, and he refuses to listen to their insanity any longer. There is no way, _no way_, that he is now alone; there is no way that his brothers _and_ his bonded-mate could be offline; there is no way that they could have died during these simplistic "battles" they've engaged in since waking up on this miserable dirt-ball of a planet.

It is not possible; it is not real.

Even if his spark does feel like it has been shredded, that doesn't mean that they were gone. Damaged and in severe pain, yes. Dead? They couldn't be….

And then he remembers. The sickening crunches of two frames colliding in mid-air, the panicked scream of his youngest brother as they fall, slamming into the nuclear reactor, the sound of a fusion cannon and the roar of silence that envelopes him almost directly afterwards. Worst of all, the three almost-audible *snaps* in his spark – one each for….

He screams.

* * *

Megatron had been aiming at Prime, whom had dived, and ended up shooting Skyfire through the spark. Some Autobot had been aiming at Ramjet, whom had twisted out of the way, and ended up clipping Skywarp in the chassis – right where his teleportation mechanism sat. Skywarp had panicked and had warped. Where he had meant to go didn't really matter, as he had ended up warping right on top of Thundercracker, the momentum of which had slammed them right into the nuclear reactor the battle was taking place around.

Cue the light show, and the three holes in his spark.

The bond-mate he had previously wished wasn't, and the brothers that had made everything he had done and suffered worth it. All gone. One of them, he might have been able to handle. One of them he might even have been able to forgive. But not all of them. Never all.

It had been a series of mistakes and accidents all around, and Starscream is not so irrational that he does not know this. He knows. But he also knows that the pain which wrenches his spark continuously with every pulse where he lives and they do not needs something to blame. Something, someone. It doesn't matter.

_Skywarp_ had mattered. _Thundercracker_ had mattered. Even Skyfire had mattered, though Starscream would never have admitted it out loud. They had mattered; now everything that had kept Starscream somewhat sane and stable was gone. He could feel it, the insanity, pushing against the edges of his thoughts. He has lingered on the edge of this insanity for years beyond measure, always pulled back every time he strayed by one of his bonds, always kept as rational as possible by the simple fact that others depended on him to remain so.

But he has no one now. He has no one and nothing – without a trine, without fellow seekers capable of keeping up with him, he is worthless. Megatron has already taken advantage of this – Starscream is no longer the Air Commander, nor is he the Second in Command. He has been cut loose, completely and irrevocably alone and without any responsibilities to distract him.

And with every click the holes in his spark grow larger and heavier and threaten to consume him whole.

* * *

**This was supposed to be a one-shot, but I'm too excited about this fic to bother with waiting until it's done. I hope you enjoy this! RnR?**


	2. Deviate

**Title: **Unfortunate

**Part 2:** Deviate

**Summary:** One never knows just how far a mech is willing to go.

**Characters: **Starscream, Decepticons, Autobots

**Warnings: **bad mojo, character death

**Continuity:** G1

**AN: **And the next part. ^^ I hope it doesn't disappoint.

And my thanks to everyone who reviewed! You all have my love and thanks, though I know I haven't responded to anyone personally yet - you can blame my stupid internet for that one, as it doesn't like whatever line of code FF's using. .

* * *

He walks down the corridors of the _Nemesis_ like a ghost, silent and unseen. He is insane. He knows it, embraces the madness completely and totally. He is insane, but he is as intelligent as ever, and do not the humans have a saying that there is a fine line between genius and insanity? He has crossed it, has bounded over that line eagerly and without regret, and in doing so has gained the means to unleash his vengeance.

He will see them all dead for what they've stolen from him. His brothers had deserved to live through this war; Skyfire deserved the honor of dying by his hand if he was to die at all – even now, after all that's happened, he cannot say for sure just what it is, exactly, he feels for the now-dead shuttle.

So he walks down the corridors of the _Nemesis_, smiling, smiling. He waves at the security cameras that fail to track his movement. And why not? He was once the Second in Command, might as well still be considering that Megatron has yet to name a replacement, and there is no security function that is stranger to him. Megatron has not even made a token effort to change the passwords, possibly believing his insanity has left him stupid as well. Well, he'd always claimed the Warlord was a fool, and now he has proof of it.

They would pay. They would _all_ pay. He hums, pleased with the thought. He has thought long and hard on how he would kill them all, because he cannot allow himself to be caught at anything before he has the chance to also take out the Autobots and after them those pathetic insects that built the reactor that cost him his brothers. He has thought long and hard, and believes he has found a simple solution, a poetic one, all things considered.

So he walks down the corridors of the _Nemesis_, smiling, smiling, waving, and overriding each lock on each door he passes by. He resets each and every single lock so that they are only capable of being opened from the outside, and only then if they had a two-thousand character long code that was comprised of characters mainly imported from the long-dead Voxni, a language only three living mechs had known once upon a time, though that number now resided at one living mech.

Oh, they would _pay_. Yes, yes they would.

He hums and smiles and walks down the corridors of the _Nemesis_, security cameras blind to his presence as they never would have been before, because before he wouldn't have _dared_ do what he's doing now. But now he dares much because he no longer has time or patience for those games he once played; now he is serious, deadly so, driven by his grief and anger, made great by his insanity.

Once he is sure that every door is locked, unable to be opened, trapping his fellow Decepticons in their respective rooms, he slips unnoticed into the small room off to the side of the control room. The room he slips into is where the vast majority of security is actually run, and as usual, no one mans it. This is hardly unusual – there are only three mechs with access to this room, and two of them were now trapped within the control room, though they didn't know that yet. He looks at all the monitors for several long moments, watching his fellow Decepticons as they continue on with life, not a one of them regretting the loss of valuable companions or veteran soldiers, not a one of them suspecting that every last one of them would die within a matter of human hours.

He smiles, gently, cruelly, as he slips a small disk into a data drive. Immediately the security monitors fizzle out, all except for one, which displays a simple command screen. He cocks his helm for a brief moment, and then gets to work. He has much coding to enter to reroute the _Nemesis'_ systems in precisely the correct manner to do what he needs done and little time to do it in.

He hooks himself into the console and begins, watching the new coding fly by on the screen twice as fast as anything Soundwave could ever hope to keep up with. The joys of having a processor capable of such speeds were vast and varied, and this was one of them: a coding job that would take another specialist at least a full cycle to complete will only take him a breem, if not less. Not, of course, that another specialist would even _dream_ of doing what he's doing. Subroutines were par for the course in times of war; hackers used them all the time to build themselves "back-doors" in systems so that they could easily get around things like firewalls and encryptions. But to actually go through the existing code and _change_ it…

Well, suffice to say that the few who had tried it, especially on systems as advanced as those of the _Nemesis_', were driven mad if their processors weren't fried first. The code moved too fast, was built to be semi-sentient and capable of self-defense. But he is already mad. How could he become any more insane than he already is? Besides, it doesn't matter, not really. His mind is quick and his processor quicker. Despite the speed of the _Nemesis'_ coding, he is able to keep up, changing the codes to his satisfaction quicker than the _Nemesis_ can defend itself.

His changes are simplistic, really, which counts a great deal towards his success. A tweak here and there is really all he needs. Well, that and the complete and total overhaul of the command overrides – he doesn't want Soundwave or Megatron pulling some _dues ex machina_ out of their afts and surviving this. Not only will Megatron's survivial completely ruin any element of surprise he has going for him – as there is no doubt in his mind that Megatron would turn to Optimus Prime if he survived this – but even as insane as he is, he knows that if Megatron gets ahold of him, the game is over. Starscream is cunning and smart and fast and insane, but he is not a physical powerhouse like Megatron is, and all it will take is one simple mistake on his part for the game to be up.

When he finishes, he chances a small break, shuttering his optics and cycling air for several long moments. His processors ache – which is normal considering what he's just done – but it is the sharp agony in his spark that truly wearies him. It will be there until the day he dies, he knows. That pain is the pain of his spark being sundered in a way no spark was meant to, and only his determination to live long enough to see justice done has prevented him from joining his bonded in death. He checks his chronometer, opens his optics, and goes back to work.

Thankfully the hard part is done. Now, all he has to do is clean up after himself, erase any and all signs that he has tampered with the _Nemesis_' codes, and get out of the _Nemesis_ before everything goes to hell. No pressure. None at all.

He smiles.

* * *

**And, yes, I am a tease. ^^ **


	3. Devour

**Title: **Unfortunate

**Part 3:** Devour

**Summary:** One never knows just how far a mech is willing to go.

**Characters: **Starscream, Decepticons, Autobots

**Warnings: **bad mojo, character death, cannibalism

**Continuity:** G1

**AN: **And yet another section. I'm thinking at this rate I'll be updating every 2-3 days, to be finished sometime next week. Hopefully. I'm not making any promises though.

* * *

He sits patiently, still as the dead and twice as grave, waiting. His gaze never once leaves the ocean waves beneath which rest the _Nemesis_ and his soon-to-be victims. He has been sitting here for several Earth-hours, waiting, watching. He holds in his left hand a small data-pad, through which he absently cycles through sound-feeds from certain areas of the _Nemesis_.

Megatron and several others have already discovered that they are trapped. This doesn't bother him. He finds a dim sort of ironic amusement in their fury and helplessness; he suspects that this is one of the first times any of those still trapped below have ever felt this weak and ineffectual. He wonders what is going through their processors. Have any of them even thought that he could be capable of this? Have any of them thought of their own actions this past Earth-month and realized that while they are not to blame for what he is now doing, they certainly didn't try and prevent it either. He knows Megatron is currently blaming him, but Megatron has blamed him for everything and anything that has ever gone wrong, and Starscream honestly doubts that the other Decepticons even listen to that tired litany any longer.

And does it matter? They _all_ threw him away, cast him out and aside and mocked him during his most vulnerable period of grief, during a stage where mechs usually died. Three bonds torn asunder in mere moments of each other; mechs usually perished with only _one_ bond ripped apart. They had dared mock Skyfire to his face, and while he may have tolerated such slurs when the shuttle had been alive, at least Skyfire had been _alive_ and deserving. But Skyfire was dead, and unlike the last time he'd lost the shuttle beneath the ice so long ago, this time there was no hope of revival. And no one got to mock his brothers. No one. Not even Megatron had dared to mock them while they were alive. Beat them, punish them, rage and rail, of course. It was only to be expected. But mock them? _His_ brothers? He'd _killed_ more mechs than he could care to count for _less_.

So he waits and watches the surface of the ocean. Occasionally, an exceptionally creative curse stands out amongst the vast litany of them and makes him smile, but mostly he simply sits and watches, gaze impassive, wishing with his entire spark that one of his bonded were here to sit with him.

He is waiting. For what, he's not quite sure, but he knows the show will be spectacular to witness when it happens.

* * *

An entire Earth-days passes before anything even remotely interesting happens. He's listened carefully to the sound-feeds for the past several Earth-hours, growing more and more amused as first Soundwave and then the Constructicons make the connection between him and the strange language the doors are locked in. Megatron has by this time straight-up blasted his way out of the Command Center and has barricaded himself in the Security room with Soundwave, both attempting to override the _Nemesis_.

He smiles and smiles, because he knows that with each code they attempt to override, they are that much closer to initiating the count-down that will rid him of their troublesome presences. Soundwave is an intelligent mech, a handy hacker, and a brilliant Communications Specialist, but he is not nearly in the same league as Starscream himself is when it comes to thinking outside the box. Soundwave searches for the virtual 'finger-prints' that Starscream usually leaves around whenever he attempts something this underhanded, but he will find nothing this time. Starscream has been most thorough in his clean-up. Once upon a time, he might have left those markers, but that was when he truly didn't care whether or not he got caught. Back then, either way he cut it he had something to come home to, had someone worthwhile near him keeping him from pushing too far, too fast.

He has no one now.

This is alright, though. He stands and stretches, working out the kinks in his joints from sitting so still for so long. Things will be getting interesting right about….

...now. He watches as the ocean erupts up and out, water violently ricocheting for _miles _with the force of the explosion below the surface. The shockwave that follows threatens to toss him to the ground, but still, he waits, gaze narrowed, waiting. Cybertronians are a particularly hardy race, after all. If one or two managed to get out of the _Nemesis_ before she erupted, there was a chance, no matter how slim, that there would be survivors. He could not allow that. Not now.

And sure enough, eventually several thrashing bodies rise to the surface, one or two screaming in anger, but most in pain. Most were missing limbs and had great fissures in their chassis; he imagines the pain of the salt water against exposed wires and circuitry must be beyond agony. One, however, is making his painful way to the shore, to him.

Megatron.

He smiles and leaps into the air, igniting his thrusters and gliding down the cliff he sat on to meet his once Lord and Master. As he lands, he withdraws a small energon-blade. Megatron looks up at him, furious as usual, but this time also with fear in his optics, because Megatron is weak from his injuries, but Starscream is not. Starscream is perfectly healthy, perfectly whole, and while he may not have Megatron's brute strength, that has certainly never stopped him before. There were some days when Starscream had fought Megatron and would have won had it not been for the timely interruption of one of Megatron's loyal – right now, there was no one to stop Starscream.

No one.

He smiles, even as he kneels before his once-Lord's fallen body. He smiles, even as he draws the energon blade slowly, carefully, against the main energon-lines in Megatron's neck. He smiles, content and almost-happy, even as he slowly, carefully, cuts Megatron into too many tiny pieces to ever be reassembled. He smiles, even as he holds Megatron's flickering spark in his hands and devours it whole. He smiles, even as he chokes on the burning ball of light.

He is still smiling when he turns his attentions to those floating on the now-calm surface of the water, groaning and crying and dying inch by painful inch as they leak their life-fluids out into the greedy ocean.

* * *

***cackles* Suitably creepy? You know, this fic is absurdly fun to write. I wonder what that says about me as a person?  
**


	4. Design

**Title: **Unfortunate

**Part 4:** Design

**Summary:** One never knows just how far a mech is willing to go.

**Characters: **Starscream, Decepticons, Autobots

**Warnings: **bad mojo, character death, cannibalism

**Continuity:** G1

**AN: **And yet another section. Autobots getting started, as are the humans. XD

* * *

He sits outside the Autobot base, shrouded by trees and shrubbery. He waits, patiently, silently. He lurks, quiet, and still, signal jammers on and energy field tightly bound under his control. His once bright paint-job is marred by the grey of soot and ash, the brown of dirt, the red-orange of rust, and deep evergreen of trees. He waits, and he watches, studying his prey as they come and go with an intensity that had once been reserved for his experiments.

While he waits, while he watches, he spends much time hacking the humans' inferior networks,* searching for information and finding it with ease. He traces human military experiments and caches, a plan forming, hazy now but soon to be made reality. He thinks of his brothers, and of the nuclear reactor that stole them from him. He thinks of the frailty of human life, and of the various nuclear warheads stashed quietly in various spots all over the globe.

He thinks of nuclear holocaust, and of how poetic it would be to see the humans burn in the flames of their own making.

So, as he watches the Autobots' movements – how they come and go, who leaves and who stays, etc. - he also sets up his plans for the humans, quietly issuing ghost orders to various generals who begin to discreetly move hundreds of nuclear bombs to strategic places, always being careful to intercept the requests for verification of orders and verifying them.

He moves only those nuclear bombs owned by the United States of America, and makes no move to hide those movements from any other country, even as he blindsides everyone in power here. To those in the US government, nothing is wrong, nothing is happening, except for most of their allies bombarding them with frantic warnings and enemies pounding on their doors with furious demands made in such a way as Starscream has no trouble seeing the panic and fear behind every word.

He almost gives himself away, he is laughing so hard. But he turns out to be rather lucky in that no one is currently in the Autobot base – they are all in Florida on Bethune Beach examining the remains of what used to be the Decepticon Empire. He imagines their disgust, their horror, their private elation.

He smiles.

* * *

He makes no attempt to hide his approach – and why should he? He has waited for nearly an Earth-month after the Autobots discovered the Decepticon Army's remains. He has listened quietly to conversations broadcasted on channels meant to be private, but weren't, because the human's network is not the only thing he's been hacking lately. He has listened as each Decepticon the Autobots knew were trapped here on this disgusting planet were eventually named and listed as deceased – which only happened once they found enough parts to identify a mech. Of Megatron, no one has yet said a word, but even Optimus Prime has privately speculated that the explosion that took out the _Nemesis_ took out the Tyrant as well. No one has yet said a word of him, either, but Starscream knew where he stood on the Autobot's private level of threat. No one had ever given him much in the way of respect since long before they had crashed on this planet; his past glories were attributed to blind luck, behind-the-scenes maneuvering, or functioning sanity. Even if they suspected that he is alive, not one Autobot would think to be on the look-out for him.

As far as they were concerned, he might as well be a ghost.

So he approaches the Autobot base, smiling. He makes no move to hide his approach, and no one makes any move to protest his movement. Not that there is anyone to protest. There are only two mechs inside – and neither of them are known for their paranoia. Ratchet would be minding his med-bay or catching up on some much needed rest, and Perceptor is no-doubt deep into one of his many projects. All the others are gone – some dragged out protesting against their will.

Starscream smiles.

The Autobots have grown careless once the assurance that the Decepticons that were Earth-bound were truly deactivated. While part of him still searches for any hint that this is a trap of some sorts, the vast majority doesn't care. No one but Megatron has ever had a hope of catching him and beating him into submission; no one but Megatron could have even hoped to kill him until he is done with what needs to be done.

He ambles leisurely up to the door, smile turning derisive when the door opens with a merry tone of welcoming. Inside is a long hallway with multiple doorways branching off. Each one he walks by is unlocked, and each room reveals the Autobot's general happiness that the war is now mostly over. It's sickening to him, to know that the Autobots, those who preach about the right of all could celebrate the death of another, even their bitterest enemies.

But then again, who is he to talk? He knows that the party for his 'death' – once it is confirmed – will probably be one of the most festive the Autobots will ever throw. After all, he has personally taken out almost most of the Autobot faction, and has led the attacks that took out almost the whole of Cybertron. Those two Praxians were some of the last of their frame-kin, all thanks to him, not that they would admit it now. His smile grows wicked. And by Primus, how he enjoyed every moment of it all.

He eventually makes his way into the Control Room of the Ark, and spends a long moment simply smiling at his warped reflection on the black monitors. He imagines all the things he could do to _Teletran II_, all the ways he could drive the Autobots insane bit by bit before he kills them all. The moment of reflection is interrupted when Perceptor walks in. They stand there and stare at each other for a long moment, before Perceptor eventually turns and runs. Starscream snarls and races after the smaller bot. He spares a small second to berate himself for his inattention, but it is of no matter.

The quiet approach is now out, but that's okay. Truly it is, because now he can _really_ have some fun.

* * *

**And now shit is really going to hit the fan. The next chapter is shaping up rather nicely, and should be much longer. ^^ RnR?**

**Notes:  
**

***One of the few things I actually liked about Bayverse was the way they set up internet access through the bots. I rather liked how some had what basically amounts to WiFi connection, while others had to take a more hardline approach. I kinda hijacked the set-up, though I highly exaggerated what could be done through the web in the1980's. Although I know it might shock some of you younger folks out there (not all of you though), the internet as we know it really didn't get popular until the mid '90's. As far as I'm concerned, Starscream is capable of both hardlining and the Cybertronian equivalent of WiFi, though he isn't capable of doing much damage over that connection. To successfully hack anything Cybertronian, he has to be hardlined, but because of the primitive nature of the internet that the humans have at this time, he is more than capable of doing some serious shit. Especially considering that it's mostly government and military that have access to it.  
**


End file.
